Anmol Satija– So hello and welcome to the unthinkable tech podcast, the go to source for the pulse on technology shaping our future. I am Anmol Satija and today we are here to discuss a topic that’s at the intersection of innovation and impact. I’m talking about AI in education. You know AI is disrupting every industry and education is no different.

AI is no longer just an experimental tool in the classrooms. It is becoming a fundamental force redefining how students learn, how educators teach, and how institutions operate. From personalized learning to AI-driven administration, the education sector is undergoing a massive transformation. And to help us navigate this shift, we have a special guest joining us today.

Dr. Greg Clinton, deputy head at the American International School Chennai and also a valued client at Unthinkable Solutions. He has been leading educational technology and organizational change at that school for the past five years. Prior to AISC, Dr. Clinton was a learning coach and IB literature teacher at Collegio in Liam, Peru.

Lecturer at Stony Brook University, New York, American Embassy School New Delhi, and many more prestigious institutions. He also co-founded IB Score Reports, a leading IB data services for school. So hi, Greg. Welcome to the show. So happy to have you here.

Greg Clinton – Thank you for inviting me.

Anmol Satija – Right, so Greg to start off our conversation, I would like to say that AI in education isn’t exactly new, right? But the way it is evolving is something we have never seen before. From adaptive learning platforms to AI-powered grading systems, the role of technology in education has gone far beyond just putting tabs in the classrooms. So to start off,

How would you describe the most significant transformations technology has already brought to the education industries? Maybe what’s actually making an impact in schools today you can share with us.

EdTech through the decades: Why AI stands apart?

Greg Clinton – Yeah, it’s a good question because I don’t think AI is the same type of thing as other educational technologies. And it’s hard to see that distinction. But if you look at the history of educational technology, you’ll see that, you know, even since 60 years ago, researchers were trying to see if machines could help children learn more efficiently.

Greg Clinton – and efficiency really was the goal. But like you mentioned, putting a computer in a child’s hands isn’t necessarily the way that we’re gonna transform learning. It can be, but it isn’t necessarily. And so a lot of educational technology interventions in education have been more promised than delivery, right? There are a couple I can think of.

Greg Clinton – One of them was the whole MOOC wave, M-O-O-C, Massive Online Open Courseware. So students from around the world would join a professor at MIT, and they would learn engineering together in groups of 10,000 or something like that. And that was supposed to disrupt the traditional higher education model. It didn’t really. We still have amazing universities, and lots of people still actually want to go to MIT.

Greg Clinton – There was another famous example where it was called One Laptop Per Child, and it was this very well-funded initiative where they were going to deliver these specially designed laptops to schools all over the world. And it really didn’t have a great impact because it was all about implementation. I the technology alone doesn’t actually transform things. So that’s the history of EdTech. Now, here we are.

In a moment where AI emerges and a lot of people at the beginning were thinking, wow, it’s the same, isn’t it? It’s just like one laptop per child. It’s just like the internet. It’s not gonna have a fundamental impact on what happens in a classroom. But I think based on what I’ve seen and what I’m experiencing, I think it does have that potential. I think it’s fundamentally different than what we’ve seen before. in the sense that AI and the tools that are emerging now and the technologies that are developing are, they’re actually implementing themselves.

AI’s real-time integration into teaching practices

It’s like, know, chat GBT, even in its, in its basic form, you go onto chat GBT, it implements itself. asks you, how, how do you want me to behave? You can, you can sort of, you can customize the way that it, it asks for your input and customize the way that it, produced an output. So

Greg Clinton – Even just that is pretty fundamentally different than what we’ve seen in the past. So definitely different in terms of what kind of technology now is being put into classrooms and into teacher workloads.

Anmol Satija – Yeah, right. Yes, important take, Greg, I would say that, of course, education has seen wave after wave of technological revolutions, like you just mentioned. And I think it’s also a great reminder that the real transformation isn’t just about the tools we introduce, but how we rethink knowledge, learning, and even the purpose of education itself.

So as you mentioned that AI is different from other technologies in a sense that it doesn’t just deliver information, it can analyze, adapt and even predict learning patterns, right? And because of that, AI is often seen as a major disruptor in education. So I am curious to know that, do you see AI as a primary tool for enhancing and optimizing the traditional education model?

Or do you think it’s a catalyst for completely reimagining how we educate?

AI as a catalyst for reimagining education

Greg Clinton – I think at this point, it’s hard to deny that this is a catalyst for reimagining what we’re doing. As much as it is kind of terrifying, you know, as an educator my whole life, most teachers are very experienced with the models that they’ve grown up with and that they’ve implemented for years. And a lot of parents are, you know, everybody has an opinion about school.

Every parent has an opinion about how school should should go because they’ve been to school and they’re like, yeah, I know what this should feel like and be like. But AI and maybe not today, but tomorrow or next week or next year. Certainly there’s a potential that AI could disrupt us pretty severely. You’ll note even in the massive tech companies that are making all these tools like OpenAI and Google.

Usually they don’t pay much attention to the education sector. Frankly, it’s not a huge moneymaker for a lot of big tech companies. But in most of the rhetoric that goes out from these large companies, education is at the center of what they’re talking about. And it’s important because, you know, even today, not every student on the planet has access to really high quality educational interactions.

You know, I think there are lot of students who are left behind because of access to the brick and mortar school structures, or perhaps they don’t have good quality internet access so they can access what’s on the web. You know, perhaps the state funded or the privately funded educational opportunities just aren’t there. So when you think about scaling learning and all you need is an internet connection, you know, even a cell phone connection. That’s an amazing sort of tantalizing outcome. And I think, you know, the human teacher also wants to say, you know, no one can replace me as, you know, a person I’m very valuable.

That’s true, too. And all of the functions of a teacher, where what you’re doing is designing learning experiences, for example, or delivering content to a student, a lot of those functions are going to be ultimately commoditized and replaceable, basically because AI is going to become really, really good at it, or good enough. And then the status of a teacher is going to change too. So we want teachers around because they’re mentors, because they are humans, because they have feelings and all of that. What it means to be in school, what it means to be a teacher fundamentally is gonna start shifting.

Anmol – Yeah, actually, I have a couple of questions planned on this topic as well. So before that, I would say that, of course, I think AI is coming out to be a true outlier with the potential of completely reshaping how technology, maybe how learning happens and

The promise and challenges of personalized learning

I would say that AI is finally giving progressive educators the tools to realize the ideas they have been honing for years. But now it’s not just theoretical, but it is actionable today, right? So this brings me to something really exciting. I want to introduce personalized learning here. So this has been the holy grail of education for a long time now, and you must also agree to that. But AI is making it more than just an ideal.

Instead of one size fits all approach, AI can adapt content, pace and support based on students’ unique needs, But at the same time, scaling personalization learning across entire institution, districts or even countries comes with major challenges. To give you an example, say equity, data privacy, teacher adaption.

like you mentioned, and even more. So from your perspective, what are the biggest opportunities AI-driven personalized learning brings to education? And maybe we can also discuss a few hurdles that we need to overcome to implement these systems effectively at scale.

Why AI alone is not enough without teachers?

Greg Clinton – Just from a learning perspective, there’s new research coming out that shows that implementing AI in classrooms without teacher guidance is actually harmful to a student’s learning. So if a student doesn’t have the framework to take advantage of it for their own learning, then they will likely lose opportunities for thinking if I was talking to someone

I know someone older, I think, you know, maybe 50. And she said, yeah, if I had this in high school, I would have absolutely used it to write a paper for my class, because it’s so good at it. And all I have to do is tell it to do it for me. So the temptations for students to use it as an opportunity to make their school lives less stressful, you know, just get the job done, move on with what seems more relevant to them.

That’s a real risk because you know, so many of the things in school that are challenging are hard to do. And that is where the learning actually is occurring. So if you don’t have teacher guidance and you don’t have those frameworks in place, then students actually harm themselves. But if you do have those in place, AI can boost what a student is able to do. It even boosts. was just reading a study out of Harvard recently where a physics professor did a really nice, well-designed comparative analysis of two groups. group that was learning, was an intro physics class at Harvard.

One was learning in an active classroom. So like a small group seminar, the teachers involved, there’s collaboration in the room and discussion. It’s not a sit and get where you just sit and listen to the professor. So it’s a really well-designed active classroom. That was one group. The other group was

They had some AI driven active learning things that they did on their own. The AI driven group outperformed the classroom group and they reported higher satisfaction and engagement with the course. So it was pretty interesting to note that, you know, if you’ve got good learners who know how to learn and how to use AI to boost their learning, it can actually be a tangible benefit, but otherwise, you know.

We can’t just let it loose. That’s the idea. But yeah, that’s sort of how I’m thinking about it in terms of learning. And that’s what we’re trying to do at our school is to give teachers and students frameworks that are both ethical and pedagogical.

Anmol Satija – Right, I think that’s an interesting way to put it. So yeah, but I also completely agree that there’s a flip side to it as well. systems, you know, if we, the school system rewards grades over growth, students will naturally find ways to optimize for the grade, right? Not the learning. And AI makes that optimization effortless too.

So I would say that now moving on to my next question, would say AI isn’t just reshaping how students learn, it is also redefining what skills are actually valuable in the workforce, right? So we also keep ourself upskilling as per the new technology, new trends. So just like that, automation, decision making, and even creativity, AI is changing what’s needed from the next gen of professionals.

What skills will really matter in an AI future?

So as AI continues to reshape industries, how should schools and universities rethink their curricula to ensure students are truly prepared for an AI-driven world?

Greg Clinton – I will give you a couple of answers and I’ll tell you also that I’m probably going to be wrong because everything I predict about how far AI will take us and the changes that will occur wind up being incorrect. And I think a lot of a lot of predictions like this will be wrong. Just because I think the changes will be bigger than we imagined. But if we say, look, at a base level, we have to be more flexible and adaptable as professionals. OK.

Anmol Satija – Yeah, but we would love to know that.

Greg Clinton – So the future of work is a huge topic and I’ll give you some answers from my perspective, but I’m almost certainly going to be wrong about them. But if you look at what large institutions are saying about the future of work, what the aggregate data from corporate surveys are saying about the future of work, a lot of them point to the fact that we need our students to be more adaptable and more flexible. They need to be more collaborative.

They need to have strong analytical thinking skills. The crucial thing in a lot of those surveys is not, they know a specific set of facts? Have they mastered a particular curriculum? That’s not actually the relevant thing. The more relevant thing is how do they approach uncertain situations? How do they approach new problems? Are they creative thinkers? Are they collaborative and so on?

You know, does AI help us with this? Well, it does and it doesn’t. you know, AI is both the tool that we can use to train students to be more flexible and it is the disruptor that’s going to force them to be more flexible in the first place. So I guess it’s both. But AI skills are definitely at the top of a lot of corporate leaders minds and what they want to see in in the next wave of of successful graduates. You know, I think

I still think that there are some lower order content skills that we need to be successful in the world, but I think they’re less and less relevant. And AI picks up the pieces in a lot of cases for those knowledge pieces that we might have delivered in school. In any case, think across the world, if your national curriculum or if your school’s approach is to master a set of facts and have students be able to spit them back to you, that’s fundamentally now irrelevant to the future. And we’re not doing any student the service that we need to do if that’s how we’re organizing our education models.

Anmol Satija – Right. I think more and more importance is also given to foundational skills as well. Like you mentioned, they should be collaborative, they should be flexible and ability to think critically is also one of the differentiators that is important for the students. And it is not about just memorizing a specific curriculum anymore.

Like you said, it is also about developing a cognitive toolkit that applies across disciplines. So but here’s the thing, like none of this works unless teachers are equipped to guide students through the shift. Like you were talking about in the previous answer. So none of this works, right? If teachers aren’t skilled enough.

Empowering teachers to Embrace AI

So how should schools and universities be thinking about upskilling teachers to work effectively alongside AI? How do we prepare educators to embrace these technologies rather than resist them?

Greg Clinton – Yeah, there are two ways to think about this. One is to think about a professional development framework. Maybe teacher education programs are going to incorporate AI at a more fundamental level. This is what you need to know to be a good teacher. These are the tools, whatever. And schools could also implement these as sort of formal professional learning opportunities. honestly, mean, OK, I think that’s great. We should be doing that.

And from what I can tell, the most successful teachers are the ones that dive in themselves and just gain a lot of experience. So there’s an author who I’ve read since the beginning of all this AI explosion stuff named Ethan Malik. And he writes a lot on Twitter and he blogs as well. his main idea, and he wrote a great book called Co-Intelligence. I highly recommend it if you just want to sort of get a pulse on where we are in the AI world. his main idea is that you yourself have to, if you want to answer any of these questions, essentially, mean, ironically, you have to stop listening to podcasts and you have to open up chat, GBT and actually invite it to the table. Try to do the things that you’re normally doing, but infuse AI and see what it can accomplish.

Every day, its accomplishments shift. And so you have to, you, as the expert, you have to be the one trying to use AI in all the different contexts that you have professionally. So my experience has been if you are trying and trying and trying and failing a lot, that’s fine. But now you know quite a bit more about what AI is capable of doing and what it’s not capable of doing. And that’s the first step. I would just recommend, I think Ethan Molek recommends something like 10 hours per AI model. And then you really know what it’s like. I recommend as much as possible.

Can AI make learning more creative and engaging?

Anmol Satija – Right. Of course, I would agree to your point, Greg, that experience is fundamental to, you know, to explore what AI can offer. But this also brings up a deeper question about AI’s role in learning. So there’s often a fear that AI will make education too mechanical, focusing on automation, rote learning and efficiency rather than fostering deep thinking into students.

Could AI actually do the opposite? Like, could it help teachers create richer, more engaging learning experiences than just emphasizing creativity and critical thinking rather than just memorization? So what’s your take on this? Do you see AI as a tool that can enhance creativity in education or is there a risk that it could reinforce a more transactional model of learning?

Greg Clinton – There’s always that risk, so we have to sort of start from there. We can’t let it reinforce that model you’re describing. But in terms of enhancing critical thinking, yeah, I mean, it’s relatively simple to do. So any teacher could give a writing assignment, and any student could go to Chad GPT and say, write me that paper. That’s obviously harming a student’s learning, et cetera. But what a teacher could do is say, all right, in class.

Let’s generate a paper from Chad GPT. And then in groups, let’s pick it apart and critically analyze it and improve it and talk about why the choices that this chat bot made to communicate misses some critical element or a different choice that we would make and justify that choice. Then you’re not using AI really to produce an output. You’re using it as material for critical thinking. So those are the sorts of moves that we need to learn and practice.

Anmol Satija – Definitely that’s a very impressive or would say fantastic way to think about it. That’s actually you are forcing your brains to think, why did the what or why did the GPT think it that way or write it that way. So yes. And there’s one more question that’s always lurking in discussions about AI in education and you also briefly touched upon it.

Will AI replace teachers in the classroom?

So the question is, will AI replace educators? Some believe AI tutors and adaptive learning systems could eventually take over much of the learning process, while others argue that human connection, guidance, and mentorship are irreplaceable. So in your view, could technology ever fully replace educators in the classroom? Or will there always be a fundamental role for human teachers?

Greg Clinton – There will always be a fundamental role for human teachers, but the role itself will likely shift. mean, right now we have a student-teacher relationship that is in a lot of cases, it’s built on sort of this course model, right? I have a course, I’m delivering the course, it’s your job to do the work that I assign you, and then at the end you get this kind of credit for having done the course. That model is limiting and it will definitely be undermined by really high quality AI learning.

I see this, by the way, in my own children. They go to school and it’s great, super engaging. They love their teachers and their classmates and everything. And when free time comes around, they have their own projects. They have things they want to learn and AI helps them in pretty significant ways. So you can just see that part expanding and the other part diminishing. But what is in that other part that won’t ever go away? Well, what if students were, I’m just imagining this, I’m not saying this is the case, but what if learning were self-directed and it were like two hours a day and then the rest of the day was about human interactions where we would practice those essential skills like collaboration and creativity and things like that.

So, or just being like athletes for half the day, know, whatever you want. I think it opens up all these possibilities for the role of a teacher as a mentor, even as a human. mean, I don’t know if you’ve had this experience, but

Have you ever run into your teacher in the grocery store and you’re like, whoa, the teacher exists outside of school? It’s so strange because, know, like there’s a possible avenue for teachers and students and families to be more communal, to be more like mentors and less like deliverers of coursework.

Anmol Satija – No, of course, you’re right. So I would say that Greg, you have given us so much to think about and it’s clear that AI isn’t here to replace teachers. It’s here to challenge us to redefine the role of education itself. So the future of learning isn’t choosing, isn’t about choosing AI and human connection. It is about designing a system where both work together in the best possible way.

How schools can use technology to get future ready?

So Greg, before we wrap up, I would love to hear about your experience working with unthinkable solutions as a technology partner. Given everything we have discussed today, AI’s role in education, personalized learning, and future of schools, how has unthinkable solutions supported your vision in leveraging technology effectively?

Greg Clinton – Something we didn’t really even talk about is the fact that schools are organizations and they’re complex human organizations and they require a lot of organizational capacity. And so just like businesses, schools have operational layers and increasingly schools are more like small software development teams, which is sort of where our school was when we found unthinkable and unthinkable.

Given its scale and its expertise was really, it was really crucial for us to use them as a design partner and an implementation partner. Cause we have big ambitions for, you know, the next phase of what software can do for schools. Just like I’m sure there are a lot of industries thinking through this. But I mean, even to the point where, well, so unthinkable is helping us become a more operationally mature organization. That’s just what they’re helping us do.

And it’s a big strategic project for us. And I want to leave you too with this notion that software is becoming more more important to the point where even software development is going to become more individualized. So a teacher in a classroom, I was just testing this morning, a teacher in a classroom will be able to say, you know what, I kind of want this tracker so that I can do this activity with a group and I want it to kind of…

make groups for me and give me a timer and do all this other stuff. You can just tell Claude to make you that and it will appear in front of you as individualized software. That’s just the first step, right? So, unthinkable and AISC, are, I think, on the same page that the future is bright, exciting, uncertain, and as operations, as organizations, we’re going to need to be forward thinking.

So it’s been great to work with them.

Anmol Satija – Thank you for your kind words, Greg. And it’s always a pleasure for us to serve you in the best possible ways. And we definitely look forward to bring newer innovations in the education industry together. So Greg, thank you again for your time and insights. And it was a pleasure to have you.

Greg Clinton – Thanks so much for having me, this was fun.

Anmol Satija – Yes, and to our listeners, thank you for joining us for this episode of the unthinkable tech podcast. If you liked what you heard, make sure to subscribe, leave a review and share it with your network. We’ll be back soon with more conversations that challenge the way we think about technology and the future. Until then, stay bold, stay curious and keep pushing the boundaries of what’s possible.